‘This is wild’: Emails show Trump funding freeze sparked concern in Nebraska state agencies
As Congress moves toward potential Medicaid cuts, expansion grows more unlikely in Mississippi
Hundreds of thousands of poor, disabled or pregnant Mississippians could lose health care coverage if Congress slashes funding for Medicaid.
Although President Donald Trump has vowed Medicaid won’t be “touched,” the U.S. House of Representatives passed a budget resolution Tuesday that instructs the committee that oversees Medicaid and Medicare to cut $880 billion over 10 years. The cuts will help pay for Trump’s agenda on tax cuts and border reform.
The talk of such dramatic changes to the federal-state program has Mississippi lawmakers concerned – and hesitant to push expansion this year.
Proposals for Medicaid budget cuts nationwide include lowering the rate at which states are reimbursed for Medicaid services, capping the amount of money states can get per enrollee, and imposing block grants – meaning states would receive a fixed dollar amount for the program, regardless of need.
Mississippi, the poorest state in the nation, could suffer the most under some of these proposals, according to health policy experts.
Despite the state having some of the strictest eligibility requirements in the nation, pervasive poverty and poor social health determinants mean that more than 650,000 Mississippians – about half of whom are children – rely on the program for basic health care. More than half of births in Mississippi are funded by Medicaid.
“Mississippi has a relatively small population, with the lowest per capita annual income in the country, rates of chronic conditions that are consistently higher than the national average, and with around 60% of Mississippians living with multiple chronic conditions,” explained John Dillon Harris, a health care systems and policy consultant at the Center for Mississippi Health Policy. “… The result is a large Medicaid population that is very expensive to treat.”
Democratic lawmakers are also sounding the alarm about deep cuts to Medicaid. Rep. Omeria Scott, D-Laurel, said it’s something Mississippians “ought to really be afraid of.”
“If they are talking about cutting $880 billion out of the budget, Mississippi is going to be on its knees,” she said at the Democrats’ legislative press conference Tuesday.
However, since Mississippi is one of only 10 states not to expand Medicaid and draw down billions in additional federal funds, some proposed cuts wouldn’t directly affect the state’s current budget – though they would affect future enrollment.
“Mississippi isn’t drawing down as much, so that’s not going to be a direct cut to your current budget, but it’s an opportunity cost,” said Joan Alker, Medicaid expert and executive director of Georgetown University’s Center for Children and Families.
Threats to slash Medicaid spending have already scared away Mississippi lawmakers from attempting expansion this year – though they have passed “dummy bills,” void of details, to keep the issue alive “should something transpire,” House Speaker Jason White said.
After a decade of squelching any debate on the issue, Mississippi House GOP leaders in 2024 pushed for legislation that would expand Medicaid to 200,000 low-income adults, as 40 other states have done. While the bills died after a saga of partisan politics, advocates were hopeful that the historic session created enough momentum to get the policy through the finish line in 2025.
Now, lawmakers fear they may have bigger problems on their hands.
“Unfortunately, we’re hearing more about what may be cuts or block grants to the Medicaid program in general that we will have to deal with as a state because there’s no denying we have a large Medicaid population – so I don’t know the chances,” White said when asked about the likelihood Medicaid expansion would be brought up this year.
Others are more certain the issue is dead this year.
“In a most practical sense, I’d say we probably won’t be doing anything this year,” Senate Medicaid Chairman Kevin Blackwell told Mississippi Today, though he added that if anything changes, lawmakers could suspend the legislative rules and bring a bill back to life late in the session.
Click the dropdown to learn more about the specific proposals that would reduce Medicaid funding:
Reducing the federal match rate
The federal government could reduce the federal matching rate, or FMAP, which determines the percentage of Medicaid costs the federal government pays to each state. How much this would affect Mississippi would depend on the language of the proposed cut.
Mississippi currently has the highest FMAP in the country at 76.9% – meaning the federal government pays for nearly 80% of Mississippians’ Medicaid coverage, while the state makes up the rest – because of the state’s high poverty rate.
One of the proposals would take away the FMAP floor. As it stands, all states receive at least a 50% FMAP, even if they “should” be receiving less, according to the per capita income formula. If that floor was removed, richer states would be affected, as their FMAP would drop below 50%. Mississippi would likely not suffer from this proposal.
Another proposal would remove the increased federal match rate of 90% that the federal government offered to newly-expanded states in the last few years. Without the increased match rate, expansion would not hold the financial favor that has made it politically palatable to Republicans in the state.
Capping benefits per enrollee
The feds could also impose what’s called a “per capita cap,” limiting the amount a state could spend on Medicaid per person. If the caps were implemented, Medicaid would only receive a certain amount of money from the federal government to cover the care of a beneficiary – regardless of his or her medical needs. States would be locked into a fixed amount based on what they have historically spent.
The fact that Mississippi has one of the lowest per person Medicaid spending would count against the state – locking it into a lower fixed budget.
Alker, the Medicaid expert from Georgetown University, says pushing expansion legislation through this year could make Mississippi more likely to receive a higher per capita budget – though it’s no guarantee.
“I’ve seen proposals that look at taking away the American Rescue Plan Act incentives, which is extra funding for states that newly come to expansion … I have seen some chatter about how one proposal is to take away those incentives, but to not take them away from states that were counting on them,” explained Alker.
“In other words, sort of grandfathering in North Carolina and South Dakota (states that expanded Medicaid in the past two years). So, if anything, it might be smart for Mississippi to do the expansion this session and lock that in.”
Imposing a block grant
Imposing block grants would be similar to per capita caps, but arguably more punishing for states since funding wouldn’t change based on enrollment growth.
Block grants would limit states’ abilities to respond to emergencies, and would especially hurt rural areas, research says.
Limiting provider tax
Mississippi is currently almost maxed out on the tax it’s allowed to impose on hospitals, which helps the state pay for its share of Medicaid spending. One option being discussed in Congress is to lower the limit of or eliminate the tax, which would mean hospitals would be reimbursed at a lower rate and there would be less state money to fund the Medicaid program.
The proposal is less likely to garner support, explained Harris, the policy consultant at the Center for Mississippi Health Policy.
“It’ll be difficult to move this particular reform through Congress since such a large number of states, both red and blue, rely on this tax to pay for their programs,” he said.
But if it did go into effect, the impact would be profound.
“The state would have to get really creative in figuring out what to tax and how in order to maintain the current level of support hospitals receive through these supplemental payments,” Harris said.
Imposing work requirements
Work requirements have long been discussed as a means of making Medicaid expansion more palatable to conservatives who view the program as “welfare.” Now, Congress may decide to impose work requirements on the regular Medicaid population.
As it stands, Mississippi has one of the country’s strictest income requirements for Medicaid. Childless adults don’t qualify, and parents must make less than 28% of the federal poverty level, a mere $7,000 annually for a family of three, to qualify. More times than not, that means that working a full-time job counts against an individual.
If the state were to keep its strict income requirements while also imposing a work requirement, it would be difficult for Mississippians to qualify for the health care program.
The red tape that a work requirement would create would also likely deter eligible Mississippians from enrolling or staying on the program.
Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann said Mississippi lawmakers have “a leg up” since the state’s former Medicaid director recently landed a spot in Washington leading the federal Medicaid division under Trump. Hosemann has yet to say what, if anything, Snyder has told lawmakers so far, but said he expects to have “a direct commentary into the area of Medicaid” through Snyder.
Regardless of what action the federal government decides to take, cuts of this magnitude would affect millions of low-income people across the country, not just in Mississippi.
“States will be forced to deeply cut eligibility, benefits and reduce provider rates,” Alker said in a statement published online in response to the House budget resolution outlining Medicaid costs. “These cuts will especially harm rural communities who are more reliant on Medicaid, and where hospitals are already operating on tighter margins.”
Taylor Vance, Geoff Pender and Michael Goldberg contributed to this report.
Mississippi Today receives grant support from The Bower Foundation, as does the Center for Mississippi Health Policy. Donors do not in any way influence our newsroom’s editorial decisions. For more on that policy or to view a list of our donors, click here.
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America’s Digital Demand Threatens Black Communities with More Pollution
Ninety years ago, President Franklin D. Roosevelt and South Carolina Gov. Ibra Blackwood worked together to bring electricity to rural South Carolina. But to build the power plant that would make it happen, they destroyed the homes of 900 Black sharecropping families. With them, 6,000 graves — including those of formerly enslaved people — were removed or desecrated.
Today, as South Carolina races to power its digital future, history seems to be repeating itself, with Black communities once again paying the price for progress.
Last year, the parent companies of Facebook and Google pledged more than $4 billion for new data centers in South Carolina. Every email you send, question you ask ChatGPT, or Instagram post you share relies on these centers. However, on this new digital frontier, the health and safety of Black communities are at risk.
While state officials work to craft legislation to attract these new projects, residents and community advocates say this will ramp up environmental hazards, increase utility bills, and exacerbate health disparities. Meanwhile, experts say, the economic promise of AI remains a mirage for Black communities, widening wealth gaps and displacing workers.
“Most Black households, especially rural ones in the South, are not using AI or as much computing power, but they are having to pay for that demand in both money and dirty air,” said Shelby Green, a researcher at the Energy and Policy Institute.
South Carolina is joining other states, like Texas and Illinois, with proposals to reopen at least two power plants in rural Black communities to run these new projects. Rural communities have begun to attract tech companies for data centers due to their low population densities, ample open space, and relatively lower energy and land costs.
Energy experts argue that the growing electricity demands from data centers are prolonging America’s dependence on dirty energy sources. Nationwide, at least 17 fossil fuel generators scheduled for closure are now delayed or at risk of delay, and about 20 new fossil fuel projects are being planned to meet data centers’ soaring energy demands. By 2040, South Carolina projects the need for four new fossil fuel power plants.
At a protest last year, Audrey Henderson, a resident of one of the towns facing the prospect of a polluting power plant, said she fears the impacts on her and her neighbors’ properties.
“My forefathers worked hard to get that property; that we have land. I have children in New York to get land when I pass away. Grandchildren and so forth and so on,” she said. The fact “they could just come in here, give us a couple of dollars, and take our land and put pipelines into it. Then we also have well water, just stuff going into the wells is very disheartening, and I’m really concerned.”
Across the country, low-income Black communities face the harshest pollution exposure from these plants, while Black workers are disproportionately in roles most vulnerable to AI and automation. A McKinsey & Company analysis warns that if AI growth continues at its current pace, the wealth gap between Black and white households could widen by $43 billion annually within the next two decades because of disparities in who it serves.
Compounding these issues, data centers are expected to use 12% of the nation’s energy by 2028, a 550% increase from last year. An artificial intelligence search using ChatGPT, for example, uses anywhere from 10 to 30 times more energy than a regular internet search.
“The energy demand, data centers, and where the energy sector is going should not come at the expense of low income and Black communities,” said Xavier Boatwright, an activist who has worked on environmental issues in rural South Carolina for years.
In South Carolina, officials predict data centers will drive 70% of the state’s increased energy use, with subsidies already raising utility bills for consumers. Through his canvassing across the state, Boatwright said he now regularly sees rural mobile home communities where people are paying more for their utility bills than mortgages because of this increase.
“It’s kind of like if you go out and your employer is paying for your dinner, and you order the fanciest stuff on the menu,” explained Green, who researches how rising utility bills are pushing Southern Black communities into poverty. “You don’t really have to worry about how expensive it is because it’s not coming out of your pocket. That’s how these companies are operating; they’re not holding the risk associated with increasing electricity costs and these new power plants — you are.”
In majority-Black, poor rural Fairfield County, the state is proposing to reopen a stalled nuclear plant that has long been a symbol of broken promises and financial strain for residents. Advocates warn that restarting this decades-long gamble could further burden a population already facing systemic neglect. Billions of taxpayer dollars and rising energy costs are at stake, yet the benefits of the project seem unlikely to reach those facing the worst consequences.
In South Carolina, and across the country, statistically, Black people use the least amount of electricity, yet experience the highest energy burden—meaning a larger share of their income goes toward energy bills.
In the other case, a Black stronghold in Colleton County celebrated the monumental victory of closing a coal-fired power plant in their neighborhood, which was connected to poor health outcomes for residents. Now, the state proposes to convert that very site into a gas-fired power plant to meet the energy demands of data centers. Every year, the pollution from natural gas plants is responsible for approximately 4,500-12,000 early deaths in the U.S., studies show.
“If you mapped all of the existing power plants in South Carolina, they’d follow the old path of one of the foundational pillars of the American economy through South Carolina: plantations and enslaved labor,” Boatwright said. “We’ve seen the repeated pattern of these threats in our community.”
Who pays for this growth?
With this boom, tech companies like Google are making huge profits by securing special deals with utility companies.
Google’s head of data center energy, Amanda Peterson Corio, said Google’s energy supply contracts undergo “rigorous review” by utility regulators and are crafted “to ensure that Google covers the utility’s cost to serve us.”
Yet, last year, the company inked a deal in South Carolina to pay less than half the rate that households pay for electricity.
These low rates, combined with tax breaks and state-approved subsidies, are used to lure big tech companies. However, these deals force local families and households to cover the cost of building extra power plants, meaning everyday customers end up footing the bill.
A data center is a combination of massive warehouses packed with rows of servers and high-tech gear that stretch longer than football fields, all humming away to store and manage the digital data we use every day. They’re so massive, for example, that Google’s first South Carolina data center, which opened in Berkeley County in 2009, uses the equivalent electricity of roughly 300,000 homes and the amount of water of at least 9,000 homes. As of 2021, it was also powered by more fossil fuel based energy sources than any of Google’s two dozen other data centers nationwide.
This uneven situation leads to a growing gap between corporate savings and community expenses, with everyday people shouldering the extra burden. Black communities, in particular, tend to face higher utility costs and, as a result, are more likely to have their power shut off for missed payments. Along the East Coast, monthly utility bills are expected to increase as much as $40 to $50 mainly due to data centers.
South Carolina legislators — Democrats and Republicans — have implored the state’s regulators to rethink discounts and other subsidies, but the push has not made waves so far.
“Current residential ratepayers are going to pay a lot, lot more because of data centers that bring almost no employees,” Chip Campsen, a Republican South Carolina state senator, said at a legislative hearing last September. Tech companies must “participate in paying the capital costs for building the generating capacity for these massive users of energy.”
This issue ties into broader government policies aimed at boosting American technological growth and making the United States a leader in artificial intelligence. The Trump administration, for example, has signaled that it might bypass some environmental regulations to speed up projects like data centers and power plants. The new leader of the Environmental Protection Agency, Lee Zeldin, has said making “the United States the Artificial Intelligence capital of the world” will be one of his five guiding pillars, along with making it easier for tech and manufacturing companies to invest in the American economy.
Restarting the nuclear project
Near Jenkinsville, South Carolina, half-built nuclear reactors — remnants of the long-stalled V.C. Summer project — tower over a Black community where three out of four live in poverty. They stand as a stark reminder of a $9 billion investment that never produced power. Despite customers still footing the bill for this abandoned venture to the tune of multiple utility bill increases, the state-owned utility company Santee Cooper is now inviting proposals to complete one or both units. Supporters argue that reviving the project would add 2,200 megawatts to the grid — enough to power hundreds of thousands of homes — and help meet surging energy demands driven by tech giants. Recent inspections by the state’s Nuclear Advisory Council have deemed the site in excellent condition, bolstering growing legislative support.
Researchers say it would be the first and only nuclear project to restart after being halfway built. Critics caution that history warns against overly ambitious nuclear bets that can lead to decades of delays, spiraling costs, and additional burdens on customers. They contend that immediate, incremental investments in solar power and battery storage could offer a safer, more adaptable path forward rather than reinvesting in a risky long-term gamble. Currently, nuclear energy is about four times more expensive to produce than solar energy.
Last year, the state was granted over $130 million from the Biden administration for solar projects, but the funding is now in limbo under the Trump administration.
The Black-led South Carolina Energy Justice Coalition has spent years advocating for solar and wind energy in rural Black communities. “Every citizen is worthy of that type of energy by virtue of just being a human being,” Shayne Kinloch, the group’s director, said last year.
The gas issue
Along the banks of the Edisto River in the heart of South Carolina, a former coal-fired power plant — closed in 2013 — is poised for a dramatic transformation. Dominion Energy and Santee Cooper plan to convert the site into one of the nation’s largest gas-fired power stations, a move approved by the state’s Public Service Commission. Designed to produce up to four times the energy of the old plant, this project is a central part of efforts to retire remaining coal facilities by 2030 and transition toward a future of “reliable, affordable, and increasingly clean energy,” the companies said.
However, environmental advocates and legal experts warn that this expansion of gas infrastructure may echo a troubling legacy where vulnerable communities bear the brunt of environmental and economic risks. Shifting from coal to gas plants isn't environmentally or cost-effective, opponents say, because while gas produces slightly less pollution than coal, it still contributes significantly to greenhouse gas emissions. It also comes with high infrastructure and maintenance costs.
This month, the state's House of Representatives approved legislative changes that would weaken oversight of gas power plants. Joining Republicans, South Carolina’s Legislative Black Caucus Chairwoman Annie McDaniel, a Democrat representing the county home to the nuclear plant, voiced support for the legislation.
McDaniel did not respond to Capital B’s request for comment.
The changes, if passed by the state’s Senate, would allow the groups to bypass rigorous environmental reviews when proposing projects. Supporters claim these measures are necessary to meet rising energy demands from tech-driven growth. Critics argue this could sideline investments in renewable alternatives like solar and battery storage and raise the risk of rising costs, delays, and potential noncompliance with federal pollution standards.
“Instead of investing in more risky energy generation and infrastructure, they should be investing in energy solutions like solar and storage,” Boatwright said, “but utilities are choosing the most expensive and environmentally risky.”
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“We’re in competition”: An East Texas school district faces hard choices as education options grow
The Lufkin school district says it must do a better job of promoting itself amid growing competition from charter schools and homeschooling.
Federal budget turmoil prompts calls to action at Fort Bragg’s senior center
MENDOCINO CO., CA., 2/21/25 — Even with a microphone, Redwood Coast Seniors Executive Director Jill Rexrode would have had trouble getting her message heard over the cacophony of the daily lunch. Every table in Fort Bragg’s senior center dining room was filled. Lunchers enjoyed meatloaf, green salad, potatoes, and veggies. Volunteers and staff bussed carts burgeoning with cold and hot drinks and desserts. Everywhere the delicious aromas, storytelling, laughter, and clinking of crockery created a din that partly drowned out the piano player in the front. Rexrode needed to talk to the crowd and ask them to write letters and make phone calls about looming cuts to federal funding of these lunches, so she got the piano player to take a break and stood next to the American flag with a microphone and called for attention. Some went silent.
“I really need to talk to you to get your help in getting the Older Americans Act renewed,” Rexrode said. She asked those enjoying the meatloaf, the most popular lunch every week, to take a brochure provided at the door and write and call “all of those” on a long list of politicians and nonprofit groups. She asked the roomful to each send the message to get Congress to return funding used nationwide for senior nutrition.
“Please do this so we can continue to provide our lunches and Meals on Wheels here,” Rexrode said.
A looming federal funding crisis for the Area Agency on Aging of Lake & Mendocino Counties (AAA) could upend the budgets of all the senior centers in Lake County and three in Mendocino County, but only Fort Bragg’s Redwood Coast Seniors has chosen to make a fuss after the AAA alerted all its client senior centers that trouble was brewing.
Redwood Coast Seniors got $268,000 in federal money last year through AAA, Rexrode said. This provides much of the cost of one of the county’s largest Meals on Wheels and senior center dining programs.
Willits and Ukiah senior centers don’t get the federal feeding funds but are dealing with a separate issue, cuts to their outreach programs by Mendocino County. All the senior centers said the current uncertainty and talk of federal cuts is taxing an already thin line in two counties with poverty rates about 20 percent above the statewide average.
The noisy brouhaha coming from the Mendocino Coast has involved dozens of people calling a long list of state, local, federal and elderly activist groups. The call content shows up on local radio, news sites, billboards and social media, but pretty much only in Fort Bragg. The AAA says it’s a problem that does need action and has gotten local political help in fixing it. But many of those being called say they can’t fix the problem in the way callers from Fort Bragg are asking.
Understanding the problem that created the activism involves untangling a Gordian knot of partisan politics. Rexrode, like Alexander the Great, cut to the point instead.
“All of that is moot right now. We don’t want ‘he said, she said.’ Who gives a flip about that at this point? The point is we have to work together to renew the Older Americans Act, or thousands of seniors will go hungry.”
Zo Abell, on the Redwood Coast Seniors board at the senior center put it like this: “Support has always been and remains bi-partisan.”
While no payments have stopped yet, a little fix right now could prevent a crash by March, Rexrode said.
Omission of Older Americans Act funds
A December federal budget showdown led to a continuing resolution in place of approving a new budget. The Senate’s version of the continuing resolution included a funded Older Americans Act (OAA). But the version that passed the U.S. House of Representatives failed to include the OAA. There is widespread partisan debate about who is to blame for the omission or exclusion but for now, funding continues to flow based on the old budget.
There has also been some misinformation that President Donald Trump caused the problem when in fact it happened in December, while Joe Biden was still president.
Yet whoever is to blame, the intentional or unintentional omission has created a situation where an appropriation that could have been put to bed for five years now is vulnerable to a new federal budget where Trump and both houses of Congress will have to sign off.
The approach being pushed in Fort Bragg might not be the solution, other advocates for seniors say.
When advocacy groups and representatives on the list provided to seniors and the community in Fort Bragg were contacted they said the funding was continuing to flow at last year’s levels. While they praised Rexrode for bringing the matter to light, they did not feel there was any action that could be taken outside the continuing budget process.
Redwood Coast Seniors prepared 55,000 meals last year, served to seniors in the lunchroom or the grab-and-go program or Meals on Wheels. The Anderson Valley Senior Center serves lunch two days a week. Coastal Seniors in Point Arena also gets federal funds through the Area Agency on Aging for Mendocino and Lake Counties.
Senior centers in Willits and Ukiah do not get the federal funds and are thus not impacted.
Ukiah Senior Center Executive Director Liz Dorsey said the Meals on Wheels program there is conducted by Plowshares, a Ukiah nonprofit that serves the homeless. Dorsey said Ukiah serves about 6,000 lunches per year.
“A large part of the problem is the fear of what might or might not happen. Senior centers are not funded as well as maybe they should be,” Dorsey said.
“We have always operated with uncertainty. But with these fears that people are experiencing right now, with everything in our society in flux, those who have been so generous in the past are potentially less likely to donate. Today I talked to about six or eight businesses, and across the board, I’m hearing ‘I am being slammed right now with donation requests.’”
Richard Baker, executive director of the Willits Senior Center said they serve about 21,000 meals per year, half in hall and drive up and half Meals on Wheels.
“Every senior center is run differently. We have a thrift store that generates probably about $330,000 a year. So right now, we have not had to reach out and seek federal funding,” Baker said.
“I could have applied for AAA funds and probably got money there. But why do that when other agencies depend on that money? It’s a pool of money, and if we get into it the pool has less to offer the others,” Baker said.
While Trump may not have created the current crisis, he has advocated for across-the-board cuts to social services, including recommending a cut of 25 percent to food stamp programs. The directors say all of this has added much anxiety to those overseeing thin budgets.
The Mendocino County senior centers all also face county cuts in the $25,000-$50,000 range to outreach programs. Those cuts came during the county’s budget process and will take effect July 1. The directors said they were working to raise that money but faced headwinds of uncertainty.
Lake County Social Services Director Rachael Dillman Parsons described what happened that led to this in a presentation to the board last week. The AAA is integrated into Lake County’s social services department, and all five Lake County senior centers depend on the imperiled federal funding for their meal programs.
California’s population made it one of the youngest states in the 1970 census, but the average age has been getting older since.
And the population is aging quickly in Mendocino and Lake Counties.
Census figures show that in 2022, 23.9 percent of Lake County’s population was 65 and older, up from 17.8 percent in 2010 In 2022; 24.6 percent of Mendocino County’s population was 65 and older in 2022, up from 15.5 percent in 2010, census figures show.
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Trump cuts may cost a trout-brooding, Wyoming toad-rearing federal hatchery its entire staff
SARATOGA—”Chaos.”
That was the single word a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service employee landed on to describe what life and work have been like at the Saratoga National Fish Hatchery since an offer for “deferred resignation” landed in his and thousands of other Wyoming residents’ inboxes in early February.
One of the facilities that has enabled the federally endangered Wyoming toad to stave off extinction, the 110-year-old hatchery was already in a period of transition before the chaos set in. Its supervisory biologist, Lee Bender, had recently retired, so a newcomer took the lead rearing hordes of rainbow, brown and other types of trout bound for lakes in the Wind River River Indian Reservation and fishing ponds outside of Cheyenne’s F.E. Warren Air Force Base to entertain angling airmen.
The transition meant the new supervisor was in a “probationary” employment status with the federal government. Like an untold number of other Wyoming residents, the Saratoga hatchery’s supervisor became another casualty of the Trump administration’s embrace of billionaire Elon Musk’s aggressive downsizing initiative spearheaded by the Department of Government Efficiency, also known by its acronym DOGE. It’s an effort to rapidly streamline the federal government through layoffs of tens of thousands of employees everywhere from the Department of Veterans Affairs to the National Park Service.
Within some Republican Party circles the purge has been celebrated, complete with chainsaw-wielding viral moments. Wyoming Sen. Cynthia Lummis lauded Musk’s work in a speech at the statehouse on the same day that a wave of federal employees in Equality State lost their jobs.
But on the ground in Wyoming, the indiscriminate firings look like a Bridger-Teton National Forest staffer losing his post-retirement health insurance plan and, in Saratoga, a fish hatchery supervisor packing up and bidding new colleagues goodbye just two weeks into a new job and life in Carbon County.
“I feel sorry for him,” the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service employee in Saratoga said.
The employee spoke on the condition of anonymity, which WyoFile granted because of the potential for retribution.
Keeping the hatchery afloat
WyoFile visited the facility on Thursday, investigating a tip that the hatchery was losing its entire staff because of the federal government workforce turmoil. Multiple requests for information to the Fish and Wildlife Service’s regional office in the Denver metro area yielded no responses. After the reporting trip, a public affairs officer from that office reached out and asked for written questions, but no responses were received by the time this story was published.
Right now, two staffers and an intern are still trying to maintain the 120-acre Saratoga National Fish Hatchery site, which includes 10 buildings that house thousands of trout of various age classes in addition to a breeding facility for the imperiled Wyoming toad.
“We’re keeping things going, you know,” the Fish and Wildlife Service employee said. “Just trying to do the bare minimum to keep things going.”
Being fully staffed at times in the past has meant up to four full-time workers plus another part-timer. It’s unclear how long the Saratoga hatchery’s two remaining employees will last. One of them accepted Musk’s “Fork in the Road”-branded “deferred resignation” offer, which promised pay and benefits through the end of September in exchange for walking away from the job. As of last week, the employee still hadn’t received word on whether the government had accepted their resignation — and when they’d be totally done.
As many as 8,100 Wyoming residents — the state’s entire federal workforce — received the offer. It’s unclear if the Saratoga National Fish Hatchery’s other remaining employee took the deal, or is leaving for another reason.
“I think he did, but I really don’t know,” the Fish and Wildlife Service employee said.
Another federal worker who was on site Thursday at the Saratoga National Fish Hatchery declined an interview for this story.
Even if the other person stays on, running the hatchery with a single staffer assisted by an intern would be a great challenge, according to the Fish and Wildlife Service employee who did consent to an interview.
“They’re going to have to start taking shortcuts, and they’re going to have to start making decisions,” the worker said. “I don’t think it’s going to impact things right away, like fish stocking. But it’s hard to say.”
Steep losses
The turmoil and unintended consequences that Musk’s hastily launched DOGE is inflicting upon Wyoming cuts across agencies charged with stewarding land, water and wildlife spread across a state that’s nearly half owned and administered by the federal government.
“Clearly this direction is coming from somebody who doesn’t understand how government works,” said a different federal employee in Wyoming who’s employed by the U.S. Forest Service. “People [employees] are frustrated, dismayed, about the continual attacks.”
WyoFile agreed to grant the source anonymity.
Over the weekend, Musk threatened federal workers in Wyoming and nationwide would lose their jobs if they didn’t respond to an email demanding they list in bullet-point format five things they accomplished last week. Employees were given until the end of Monday to comply.
Wyoming’s federal government employees, the Forest Service staffer said, are “very concerned about losing public land and what that means for everybody: our permittees, people who recreate on the forest [and] everyone who gets products from the forest.”
Muzzled by the Trump administration’s leadership, federal agencies have not disclosed job-loss figures and are responding to media inquiries and questions with copy-and-pasted statements. But job losses within some agencies are setting up to be steep.
The 3.4-million-acre Bridger-Teton National Forest, which manages a land area roughly the size of Connecticut, has been forced to shed over 40 of its full-time staff, according to a Forest Service employee familiar with the losses. That’s just the latest blow to a federal land manager that’s watched its budget, staffing and infrastructure erode for more than a decade.
“People [employees] are frustrated, dismayed, about the continual attacks.”
U.S. Forest Service staffer
Some ranger districts within Wyoming’s seven national forests have been hit harder than others, and many have sustained losses that will inhibit their ability to function effectively and accomplish tasks like OK’ing permits.
In Saratoga, the Medicine Bow-Routt National Forest’s Brush Creek/Hayden Ranger District oversees the Sierra Madre Range and west side of the Snowy Range. The district, which is staffed by a dozen or so non-fire staff, lost three or four full-time employees, including a wildlife biologist and a recreation specialist, according to a different U.S. Forest Service employee familiar with the cuts.
Economic consequences
The losses of federal jobs in the Carbon County town could reverberate economically. A Saratoga timber mill that’s dependent on Medicine-Bow commercial logging could have less cut timber to process because Musk’s effort has pushed out Forest Service staffers needed to OK sales under federal law.
“People from wildlife need to sign off on [a sale], for example,” the federal government employee familiar with the Medicine-Bow cuts said. “We can’t sell a timber sale or put it out to bid until we get those surveys done.”
Across the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service — which manages the Saratoga hatchery — approximately 370 employees were terminated during the initial thrust of layoffs, according to the National Wildlife Refuge Association.
“Losing this many dedicated employees all at once is an especially devastating blow to conservation efforts nationwide and an intentional dismantling of science,” Association President and CEO Desirée Sorenson-Groves said in a statement. “The National Wildlife Refuge System was already underfunded and understaffed. The people being fired today are the backbone of wildlife protection in this country.”
The Trump administration’s pick to helm the Fish and Wildlife Service, who will have to make do with the thinner workforce, is a Wyomingite: Brian Nesvik, the recently retired Wyoming Game and Fish Department director. To date, his former colleagues at Game and Fish have not been called in to assist with keeping the lights on and the fish alive at the Saratoga hatchery — but they’ll be at the ready, if it comes to it.
“I think that our folks, we’d help out any way we could if it becomes necessary,” Wyoming Game and Fish Department Fisheries Chief Alan Osterland told WyoFile. “The hatchery has been a part of that community for a long time, and hopefully it’ll stay that way.”
Angus M. Thuermer, Jr. contributed to this story.
The post Trump cuts may cost a trout-brooding, Wyoming toad-rearing federal hatchery its entire staff appeared first on WyoFile .
Peggy Flanagan hopes to be the first Native woman in US Senate
Jourdan Bennett-Begaye
ICT
WASHINGTON — It’s official: Minnesota Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan is running for the U.S. Senate.
Flanagan announced her decision and officially launched her campaign on social media on Thursday, Feb. 20, one week after indicating her interest to run when current Sen. Tina Smith said she would not seek reelection.
The lieutenant governor wrote in her formal announcement Thursday that a Native woman has never won a U.S. Senate seat.
“I believe we can change that,” she said.
Flanagan, White Earth Nation, is currently the highest-ranking Native woman in an executive office across the country.
“Growing up, my family relied on government assistance programs like Section 8 and free and reduced lunch — even though my mom worked full-time in healthcare,” Flanagan said in the statement.
“My lived experience has informed my belief that we should wrap our arms around our neighbors in need,” she said. “That’s why on the school board, in the state house, and as lieutenant governor, I’ve championed kitchen-table issues like raising the minimum wage, paid family and medical leave, and free school meals.”
Democrat Paulette Jordan, Coeur d’Alene, gave a try at becoming the first Native American woman as a U.S. Senator in 2020 when she ran against incumbent Jim Risch, Republican, in Idaho. She was unsuccessful.
Oklahoma Republican Sen. Markwayne Mullin, Cherokee, is the second Native American man to serve in the U.S. Senate. Former Colorado Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell, Northern Cheyenne, served two terms after becoming the first Native American to be elected to the U.S. Senate.
Related: Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan teases Senate run
Flanagan has served as the state’s 50th lieutenant governor alongside Gov. Tim Walz since 2019. She helped create the Minnesota Missing and Murdered Indigenous Relatives Office, a first for the country.
Many others are considering running for the seat, including Democrats Walz, U.S. Rep Ilhan Omar, and U.S. Rep. Angie Craig. According to Axios, Royce White and Adam Schwarze, both Republicans, are also expected to run.
If Flanagan won the seat, she would join a group of four Native American congressional members: Mullin; Oklahoma Republican Rep. Tom Cole, Chickasaw Nation; Kansas Democratic Rep. Sharice Davids, Ho‑Chunk; and Oklahoma Republican Rep. Josh Brecheen, Choctaw.
Deb Haaland, Laguna Pueblo, kicked off her run for New Mexico’s Governor on Feb. 11, noting that she would be the first Native American woman governor in the nation as well if elected.
Both the Minnesota and New Mexico gubernatorial elections are Nov. 3, 2026.
FROM THE ARCHIVES: ICT special interview with Peggy Flanagan
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Kentucky officials urge flood survivors to document damages
Washed out bridges, soggy sofas, and ruined ductwork: these are just a sampling of the kinds of damage that flood survivors need to thoroughly document to support a government application for financial aid from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
Local county and city governments around the state are urging residents on social media to report any damages from extreme weather and flooding.
Whitney Bailey is the disaster response project director with AppalReD — a legal aid group in eastern Kentucky. She said survivors should take photos and, if possible, create an inventory of damaged items. For appliances and electronics, it may even be helpful to log models and serial numbers.
The documentation should extend to any infrastructure on private property too.
“Start taking pictures, if you haven’t yet, of any bridges, culverts, landslides, mudslides, anything around your home. Gravel roads also,” Bailey said. “You can start making repairs but, just make sure you take photos of everything so you have proof of the before and after. And absolutely hold on to every single receipt.”
In the meantime, Kentuckians will need to wait for FEMA to approve the state’s application for individual assistance programs to repair houses and items destroyed by flood waters. Governor Andy Beshear said it submitted the application on Tuesday for 10 eastern Kentucky counties to receive that aid.
If that aid is approved, it could green light immediate grants of more than $700 for survivors and nearly $44,000 for household repairs and replacement of damaged property. Households have 18 months to apply and appeal these financial awards, but can appeal as many times as needed.
Meanwhile, news outlets are reporting that many FEMA staff were fired the same weekend that disaster struck and more firings could come. President Donald Trump has posted on social media recently that FEMA should be “terminated” and offhandedly proposed the same while touring disaster-stricken areas. He has indicated he wants local governments and states to pay for more of the recovery costs.
Trump has approved an emergency declaration to assist Kentucky’s response, but that aid is limited to immediate emergency response and is capped at $5 million. It’s unclear how he might respond to Kentucky’s request for individual assistance programs, which have individual award limits, but typically have no overall limit to local governments.